The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart.

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

The cigar is the perfect complement to an elegant lifestyle.

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.

Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

You may impose silence upon me, but you can not prevent me from thinking.

Butterflies are but flowers that blew away one sunny day when Nature was feeling at her most inventive and fertile.

The intellect seeks, the heart finds.

One can be deeply influenced by people to whom one is utterly hostile

The importance of setting a date, as in choosing a colour, is a matter of selection. Orange may be seen equally well as 'the decline and fall of red' or 'the rise and triumph of yellow'.

It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.

I remember in 1990, there were five of us making $3 million a year. When guys passed us, we didn't cry. Why would we cry? You didn't get mad when someone got $6 million. Or $8 million.

All biographers, no matter how sympathetic, end up using their subjects as mirrors to figure themselves out. I don't want to be anyone's mirror.

It's very rare that publications double their frequency.

I've been on Prozac for 12 years and I'm off it now. I know what it feels like to be excited and sad again. I haven't felt like this in 12 years; I'm like a giddy little kid.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

Raised some taxes based on court orders and voter approval.

Politeness is the result of good sense and good nature.